


a snapshot of your self-destruction

by TurntechLoveThis (angelcult)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Attempted Suicide, Happy 4/13! (Homestuck), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23637526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelcult/pseuds/TurntechLoveThis
Summary: It’s about perfection, it’s about finishing it, it’s about the 13th of April in the Strider household.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	a snapshot of your self-destruction

What makes a picture  _ perfect? _

It was a question that Dave often asked himself, when he was holding his camera and aiming it like a sniper. 

_ Precise,  _ not a word that Dave would always use in regards to himself and his perfectionist nature, but rather words he’d heard in snippets about other artists, about poets and photographers and writers— never himself. 

Tan fingers that were always smudged with ink and riddled with paper cuts, Dave thinks the word that describes him is  _ boring. _

It doesn’t matter that sometimes John slips up and calls him pretty and then stutters as he covers up the words with  _ “haha oops, not in a gay way though, you’re just.. Nice to look at?”  _

As if Dave would judge him for that, how could he, when he was soft in the heart for all the beautiful boys he could never be, could never touch or kiss or fall in love with. 

And it isn’t like he was a  _ stranger  _ to it, either, what with his Bro who just drew people in with those long legs and his surprisingly delicate face. 

He’d heard too many gasped  _ “oh, your eyes…”  _ to even doubt that his brother was an angel among men, even if he was not sweet and pure and virginal. 

_ click, click, click— _

The rapid succession of photos, all appearing exactly the same to the untrained eye but Dave was privy to all the imperfections in them, he could bear witness to the slight blurs and minute light changes, he could see the imperfections. 

He’d check them over in his makeshift dark room, hopefully when Bro was out because even though he never asked questions, he knew that he often wondered about when he’d be done so that he could open the door without the result of a sword or an empty apple juice container flying his way. 

More clicks, the birds were flying away now, a murder of them, a cloud of void, mostly void, partly- what else?

He’d find out on the trek back home. 

  
  
  


Dave thinks he is attractive in the subjective way that most people who are unattractive find themselves attractive. 

He often stocks an inventory of his ‘attractive’ features.

His face is riddled with freckles, all over his nose, cheeks, forehead and eyelids. Down his shoulders and arms and legs and even his stomach. 

Though with that comes the imperfections of his acne and his scars from picking at his skin.

His hair is white, naturally, wild and loose curls of snow that are so odd against his skin, he’s had people call him an  _ enigma.  _

The albinism didn’t stop at his hair, it seeped into his eyes too, into the bright red irises and his brittle nails and his weak immune system. 

_ “The albinism isn’t the sole cause of your condition, there may be underlying ones brought out by the albinism. Don’t believe any of those rumors you hear, you’ll live just as long as everyone else.” _

What the doctor didn’t take into account was that Dave was one of the many that was sad in a bone-deep way, he was melancholy at his core and hopeless at his surface.

The albinism wouldn’t kill him, but the depression would, the severity would make him choke on pills and stomach acid, the sheer intensity would make him gasp with a rope around his neck, the unbearable pain would make him bleed and bleed from the insides of his thighs and the thin skin of his wrists. 

He might not live very long, albinism aside and depression considered. 

The dark room hurt his sensitive eyes, but oftentimes art and pain went hand in hand, so he pushed through it. He looked at purposely and accidentally blurred photos, he looked at the lack of and overabundance of color and saturation and the Void of corvids (and he remembers the creature that’s finally ready for dissecting in his room, he’ll do that later when Bro is home, he knows how much it unnerves him). 

The resulting photos are gorgeous, but they are not perfect, as perfection does not exist. 

There’s no such thing as a picture that is perfect above all other pictures, just one that strikes you just right, that hurts you just enough, that makes it personally,  _ perfect.  _

Dave wishes he would have considered that when he started taking so many pictures.

Pictures of crows, of Cal, of puppets and of Bro, pictures of  _ himself.  _ All of it, all done to seek out beauty and perfection and yet.. He still couldn’t get it, not before the day would roll back around like it does without fail every year. 

  
  
  


Blood in the sink, blood on a wall, blood splattered across tile floors.

Bro was well-versed in photography, running the largest puppet porn inventory known to man, but this was not a snapshot he wanted.

All that emotion in him would come tumbling to the surface, and he was patching him up, and he was trying to heal his brother, he  _ was _ ,  **_he was_ ** _ ,  _ but some healing would require more skill than he had.

He’ll take his brother to the hospital, and he’ll blame himself for the blood on his hands the whole ride there. 

  
  


Stark white, just like his hair, sanitized in the way that hospitals always are and his own home is rarely ever.

So this place was not home, it was the hospital. 

This room would make for a nice picture, blurry with bright lights and intersecting lines. 

“Dave?” 

Eyes open slowly, orange that is now surrounded by red meet the exposed blood vessels that dye Dave’s eyes, locked in disbelief and fear. 

“Dave, what the hell, I thought-“

Dave never asked but he always wondered what happened with Bro’s older brother, he’d heard Bro’s muttering on the phone to some woman he’s never talked to before about how  _ “He looks just like D, just like him, down to the eyes.”  _

Did he die like this? In a hospital bed, was Bro at his side, watching him the way he was staring at him like he was scared?

Bro wasn’t speaking anymore, but Dave thinks that his tear tracks and freckles that only covered his nose and cheeks and those eyes would make for a picture that would sell out, one that would make Dave richer than God. 

“Thought I lost ya, Dave. You scared me.. you really scared me this time.”

Dave’s eyes closed again, he was so tired, so, so tired. 

Bro shouldn’t be surprised, every April thirteenth is like this.

Every single one. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and you can find me on tumblr @turntech-lovethis!


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